Senior Director, ML/AI – Search and Recommendations

Expedia Group

Senior Director, ML/AI leading Search and Recommendation for Expedia Group's travel technology. Driving the shift to AI-native discovery experiences and mentoring high-performing teams.

Posted 7/7/2026full-timeSeattle • California, Washington • 🇺🇸 United StatesSenior💰 $296,000 - $414,500 per yearWebsite

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Define and execute the scientific roadmap for the company’s most critical asset, the Search and Recommendation stack.
Drive the shift from classical ranking to next-generation, AI-native discovery experiences using the latest AI breakthroughs.
Act as the primary counterpart to senior Product and Engineering leadership, determining how centralized ranking capabilities can unlock new marketplace opportunities.
Own the high-level architectural decision-making for search ranking and recommendations, integrating the latest AI into our production stack.
Champion a strategy to move from fragmented models to large-scale Ranking Foundation Models and orchestrate the distillation of this intelligence into efficient models.
Manage and mentor a large, multi-disciplinary organization of Applied Scientists and ML Leaders, fostering a culture that bridges research and product deployment.
Ensure our algorithms optimize for long-term business value while maintaining a healthy ecosystem for our supply partners.

Requirements

What you’ll need

PhD or Master’s in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
15+ years of experience in Data Science and Machine Learning, with 8+ years of experience managing high-performing science teams and managing managers.
Deep technical authority in Search and Ranking: Proven experience designing and deploying large-scale Ranking Foundation Models, Representation Learning, and Retrieval systems (e.g., Learning-to-Rank, Two-Tower architectures, Multi-Task Learning).
Expertise in Model Distillation: Experience training large-scale "Teacher" models and applying Knowledge Distillation techniques to create efficient "Student" models for high-throughput production ranking.
Architectural Leadership: Experience making build-vs-buy decisions and designing ML systems that handle massive scale and real-time inference requirements.
Stakeholder Influence: Strong business acumen and ability to influence executive stakeholders; capable of explaining complex architectural trade-offs to non-technical partners.

Benefits

Comp & perks

medical, dental, and vision coverage
paid time off
Employee Assistance Program
wellness and travel reimbursement
travel discounts
International Airlines Travel Agent Network (IATAN) membership

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

Hard Skills & Tools

Machine LearningData ScienceSearch RankingRanking Foundation ModelsRepresentation LearningRetrieval SystemsKnowledge DistillationMulti-Task LearningReal-Time InferenceAlgorithm Optimization

Soft Skills

Stakeholder InfluenceMentoringTeam LeadershipBusiness AcumenCommunication